


i've been so satisfied

by milominderbinder



Series: maia's shameless fic a day in the month of may [27]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bickering, M/M, Quitting Coffee, Quitting Smoking, bad habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:20:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian wants Mickey to stop smoking, so they strike a deal: Ian will quit coffee if Mickey quits cigarettes, and that way they can support each other through it.</p><p>Of course, it ends up becoming a little more like a <i>war</i> than a support system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've been so satisfied

\--

the deal.

\--

 

Ian’s been fidgeting for an hour, throwing glances at Mickey whenever he thinks Mickey isn’t looking.  Which is stupid, because they’re watching TV which means they’re sat right next to each other on the couch - Mickey can see everything Ian’s doing, can feel every time Ian so much as shifts his weight.  Still, he doesn’t bring it up, because he knows that it’s always better to let Ian get around to shit like this in his own time.  So Mickey just puts up with the fidgeting and the staring and the strangely tense air in the room. 

Ian finally spits it out during a commercial for hemorrhoid cream.

“I think you should quit smoking.”

He says it at the exact moment that Mickey is pulling his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.   He pauses, with them clutched in his hand, to look at Ian.

“Oh _really?”_ he asks, raising his eyebrows.  He reaches over to hit _mute_ on the television remote.  “Enlighten me - why the _fuck_ d’you think I should do that.”

“There’s a lot of reasons,” Ian says - it sounds like he’s saying something he’s rehearsed a hundred times rather than actually answering Mickey’s question.  “It’s so shit for your health, there’s a hundred different kinds of cancer it might give you, and it smells gross and to be honest, kissing you tastes a little gross sometimes, plus it costs so much money - if we saved all the money you spend on cigarettes at the moment, we could get a new water heater in a _month._ Imagine that, Mick - an actual _warm shower._ I don’t even remember what that’s like.”

“I’ve been smoking since I was twelve,” Mickey points out.  “I think I’m a bit too stuck in the habit by now, man.”

It had actually been Mickey's twelfth birthday, the first time he smoked a cigarette.  Iggy had given it to him, while they were hanging out playing video games.  Birthdays were never much of a big deal in the Milkovich house, but still, that had kind of felt like a  _moment._ Like something significant - like growing up.  Mickey at twelve years old had wanted nothing more than to grow up and be his own fuckin' person already, so he'd kind of taken to smoking with an unprecedented enthusiasm, partly just in an attempt to prove he was mature.

“Look, you know how much I love coffee, yeah?” Ian says, reaching over to play with the stings of Mickey’s hoodie.  Mickey snorts.

“I’ve seen you drink it in the _shower_.”

“Exactly,” Ian says, grinning.  “I’m hooked, I must drink, like, two pots a day.  So what if I quit?  Cold turkey.  And you quit smoking at the same time - we can do it together.”

For a moment, there’s just silence, as Mickey turns the idea over and over in his mind.  He's never even thought about quitting smoking.  He  _likes_ smoking, he likes the taste of it and the feel of it, likes the way it calms him down.  He likes how a cigarette gives him something to do with his hands when he's in an awkward situation - which is pretty often.  But Ian really  _is_ addicted to coffee, he hasn't smoked for nearly five years but he guzzles down as much coffee as he can get his hands on - so if he's offering to give that up, it must be a pretty big deal.

“You’d do that for me?” he asks.  It seems kind of crazy.  After all this time, he still has trouble believing how much Ian actually wants him around.

“Course I would,” Ian says.  He’s smiling, like he thinks he’s already won.  And Mickey would put up more of a fight, except - well.  Except it’s Ian, who he’s always stupid for.

“I guess we could give it a shot,” he says.

 

\--

day one.

\--

 

To start with, things are good.

They help each other take the first steps.  Spend an hour hunting through the apartment, collecting up every cigarette they can find and throwing them into the trash.  There are a lot - quite apart from the go-to pack Mickey has on their night stand and in the living room, there are old ones forgotten about in coat pockets, shoved between the couch cushions, floating loose in the junk drawer in the kitchen.  Then they throw out the coffee beans too, and unplug the coffee maker.

Ian keeps smiling at him as they’re doing it, like he can’t actually believe Mickey’s sticking to their deal.  Mickey can’t quite believe he is, either - the cravings are already starting to set in, he can feel himself getting shaky and irritated, his stomach turning unhappily.

Still.  The dumb fucking smile on Ian’s face - that kind of makes the discomfort worth it.  

 

\--

day two

\--

 

On the second day, Mickey walks to the store and buys three packs of nicotine gum.  When he comes home, Ian is sipping orange juice out of the carton, staring at the coffee maker with a conflicted expression. 

As soon as he notices Mickey, he plasters a strained smile onto his face, takes another pointed sip of his juice.

“Yum,” he says, a little too loud to be natural.  “I feel so much _healthier_ without coffee.  I don’t know why I didn’t quit years ago.”

Mickey rolls his eyes, and shoves a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth.

By lunch time, Mickey’s finished one whole pack of gum, and he has a cramp in his jaw from chewing so much.  He massages at it with twitching fingers, but doesn’t stop chewing the gum.

Ian keeps wandering past the coffee pot, not even trying to hide his longing stares at it.

This is harder than Mickey thought it would be.

 

\--

day three

\--

 

On the third day, the only thing stopping Mickey from smoking is his own stubbornness.

He will _not_ give Ian the satisfaction of beating him.  He chews his gum frantically and taps his feet and fidgets around the whole apartment, but he _won’t_ let Ian win.  A couple of times, he notices Ian sneak glances at the coffee maker.  At one point, he walks over to it, hovers by the counter.

“You backing down?” Mickey asks.  Ian jumps, like he had forgotten Mickey was in the same room with him, and then looks over his shoulder, jaw set.

“In your fucking dreams.”

This isn't them helping each other out with quitting bad habits, anymore.  This is fuckin'  _battle._

 

\--

day four

\--

 

On day four, Mickey almost breaks.

It’s the middle of the night, only a few hours into the fourth day, really.  He wakes up, and he just _needs_ a cigarette.  He’s been sleeping shit ever since this whole thing began, his whole body is tired but buzzing with cravings at the same time, he just wants it to be over.

Ian’s completely buried under the blankets on Mickey’s left, looking more like a giant pillow than an actual human being.  Mickey slides out of bed, fluffs up his side of the duvet to look vaguely like he’s sleeping under it in case Ian wakes up and finds the bed empty, and then stands there, waiting with baited breath to see if he’s gotten away with it.  There’s no sound from the Ian-lump.

Score.

He hurries out of their bedroom before he can change his mind, navigating their apartment with expert ease even in the dark, focused only on getting his cigarettes.  He has a pack hidden in the bathroom, taped behind the toilet - so that’s where he heads.  He’d put them there on that first day, when he was supposed to be throwing them all away  Not like he was planning on slipping up, of course.  But somehow just knowing they were _there_ had made him feel better.

He slides one out of the pack, along with the lighter he’d stashed as well, and then hurries back out of the bathroom.  He knows better than to smoke in there - Ian’ll notice in a _second_.  So instead he heads to the kitchen, so he can climb out the window and smoke on the fire escape.

Only when he gets into the kitchen, he stops in his tracks.

Because there’s Ian, pouring out a cup of steaming hot coffee.

For a second, there's silence.  They both stare at each other with wide eyes, equal parts horrified at being caught and angry that the other one was about to cheat.

“You -” Mickey starts, but Ian quickly sets the coffee pot down and interrupts;

“You too!”

“I didn’t smoke it yet,” Mickey points out quickly, holding out the unlit cigarette like proof.  Ian squints at it through the dim light of the kitchen, bites his lip.

“I didn’t drink any yet, either.”

Another moment of silence.  Mickey wants to somehow rub this in Ian’s face, but considering he was just about to break, too, he doesn’t think he _actually_ has any kind of moral high ground.  Instead he’s just left feeling pissed off and slightly resentful.

“Pour it down the sink, then,” he says, through gritted teeth.  Ian grips the handle of the mug, hesitates, looking suspicious.

“You throw your cigarette away, first.”

There's then another long moment of silence, the air getting tenser by the second.  Mickey grits his teeth; he feels like he needs to punch something.

In the end, they toss the cigarette and coffee away at the same time, and head grumpily back to bed.  Ian seems just as annoyed as Mickey, and neither of them are quite sure what to do.  They climb under the sheets and lie there, quietly fuming at each other.

Then Ian announces that he has a boner, and they fuck, angrily muttering at each other the whole time.

 

\--

day five

\--

 

On day five, the whole thing blows up.

They’re visiting Mandy at her apartment, and Ian excuses himself for a minute.  Mickey doesn’t really think anything of it, too focused on annihilating Mandy in Mario Kart, but when he finishes the level, he starts to get worried.

“Be right back,” he says to Mandy, and leaves her to set up the next game while he goes to look for Ian.

Only when he finds him, he wishes he hadn’t.  Because Ian is stood in Mandy’s kitchen.

And he’s smoking a fucking  _cigarette._

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?” Mickey cries, stopping in his tracks.  Ian pulls the cigarette out of his lips and exhales the smoke quickly, but doesn’t even look that guilty.

“It’s - it’s nothing,” he says, letting the cigarette smoulder between his fingers.  “It’s just, y’know, keeping me calm, stopping the coffee cravings from being so bad.”

“But we’re quitting!” Mickey says.  He feels fucking _outraged_.

“No, I’m quitting _coffee,_ you’re quitting cigarettes.  Totally different,” Ian replies defensively.  Mickey’s jaw drops for a second.

“Oh, so _that’s_ how you wanna play this,” he fumes, stamping over to the kitchen.  Ian suddenly looks rattled, follows at Mickey’s heels with a worried expression.

“What are you -” he says, as Mickey grabs the pot of coffee and pours himself a generous mug full.

“You messed with the wrong guy,” Mickey says, raising the mug to his lips.  “I’m the fuckin’ king of playing dirty, okay?  You _sure_ you wanna do this, tough guy?”

“It’s not against the rules,” Ian says weakly, and still doesn’t drop his cigarette.  Slowly, Mickey takes a sip of coffee.

“ _Mmmmmm,”_ he says, staring at Ian with his jaw set.  “The smooth, milky taste of _betrayal.”_

Ian makes a noise of outrage in the back of his throat, and then shoves the cigarette back between his lips, takes a huge drag and puffs the smoke out into Mickey’s face.

"My lungs have never  _felt_ so good," he says.  Mickey lets out a low growl, takes a giant gulp of coffee.

“ _Delicious,”_ he hisses.  Ian takes a step towards him and blows out another lungful of smoke.

“Oh, the feeling of a cigarette between my lips is better than a _dick,”_ Ian says.  Mickey takes another gulp.

“I feel like I’m in a _French fuckin’ cafe_.”  

Ian takes another drag off the cigarette.  Mickey takes another mouthful of coffee.  They stare at each other, faces furious, as they speed up, more and more, until Mickey’s just _chugging_ the coffee, and Ian’s sucking down the cigarette and breathing the smoke out of his nose without stopping, both keeping furious eye contact the entire time.

Which is precisely when Mandy walks in.

“Jesus,” she says.  She doesn’t look surprised, just rolls her eyes at them.  Then she snatches the cigarette away from Ian, and the coffee away from Mickey.  “Stop being morons.  All you’ve done all week is bitch to me about your dumb contest.  Go fuck and make up already.”

She takes a sip of the coffee, then a drag of the cigarette, and wanders off towards the television.

For a moment, silence.

Then Ian and Mickey both burst out laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> for the fic a day in may. um, yeah, i have no idea quite what happened here. this is _heavily_ based on an episode of malcolm in the middle where hal catches dewey smoking and then says they can quit coffee/smoking together so long as dewey doesn't tell louis he started smoking bc hal left cigarettes hidden all over the house... i ripped the lines 'i've seen you drink it in the shower' and 'the smooth taste of betrayal' out of the ep because i nearly pissed myself laughing at the thought of mickey saying them, so i can't take credit there!
> 
> also the title is from the song 'cigarettes and coffee', perfect amirite
> 
> find me on tumblr: [mickeymilk](http://mickeymilk.tumblr.com)


End file.
